It's All About Perspective

Given recent political developments, such as the renewed gun rights debate and the debate surrounding Brexit, millions of people around the nation, and around the world, have found themselves pointing again at a broken society, where we have the problems present and known to us but refuse to do anything about them because of internal disagreement. If society is broken, then what is the problem causing it's breakdown?

I would assert it's that we are so biased to our own ideas we refuse to venture out and look at any other perspective. Have we become so unwilling to try and see situations and issues from the lenses of others to try and diversify our own views and grow them further? I would say yes. Plato believed that there were two different types of thinkers: Sophists and Philosophers. In his work "Republic," this was very apparent. He believed Sophists were hard-headed and so focused on winning debates that they lost the benefit to debating itself: gaining new perspective.

I sat down and had to think about this and how it pertained to myself. Just the other day, I found myself arguing about Brexit, really started just debating to win and not to gain any knew knowledge or perspective of the situation from others. Not only does doing that strain relationships, but it doesn't allow for the full development of personal opinion. I think if people were more open, and more willing to at least venture to perspectives different from their own, we would be a more open society and we could solve problems we face a lot more effectively and efficiently. I also think we could debate more freely about controversial issues without having that awkward tension in the air.

This isn't an easy transformation for sure. It takes time and personal conditioning to sit down and view an issue through another lens, but in my opinion, it's completely worth it and highly beneficial. Sure, you might be rock solid in your beliefs and that's OK, but being able to see where someone is coming from pertaining to an issue is a skill we are way too quick to forget about. This should be placed in effect for all issues and even all politicians; for example, Sanders supporters should try and understand where Trump supporters are coming from and vice versa. My challenge to mankind as a whole would be to be more like the philosopher and curious about life and the different perspectives we can see it through, and not the sophist who is so egotistical that they have to be hard-headed and closed-minded during debate.

Subscribe to our Newsletter

Thank you for signing up! Check your inbox for the latest from Odyssey.

This is not a valid email, please try again.

We will never be able to agree on every issue, that's a fact. I believe life is dominated by self-interest, and that leads me to believe that it's impossible for even a handful of people to agree completely on an issue. What we can do, however, is accept the challenge of getting as many perspectives as we can. We can look through life with as many lenses as possible, and in doing so we can develop our own opinions and ideas.